N??EW YORK - Darkness delivered sweetly is what drew together the improbable partnership of gentle-voiced Norah Jones and pop-punk arena-rocking Billie Joe Armstrong, the leader of Green Day. They decided to remake, of all things, an entire album from 1958: Songs Our Daddy Taught Us by the Everly Brothers.

N??EW YORK — Darkness delivered sweetly is what drew together the improbable partnership of gentle-voiced Norah Jones and pop-punk arena-rocking Billie Joe Armstrong, the leader of Green Day.

They decided to remake, of all things, an entire album from 1958: Songs Our Daddy Taught Us by the Everly Brothers.

The Everlys’ original is a contender for the most morbid album of the early rock ’n’ roll era. It arrived soon after their huge 1957 hits, Bye Bye Love and Wake Up Little Susie, both of which appeared on their 1958 debut album.

Within less than a year, Don and Phil Everly released Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, an unamplified album of stark traditional ballads and old country songs. The lyrics tell stories that feature dead and dying parents, lovers united in death, a dying child, prisoners, cheating lovers and a few murders.

“We did some strange albums in our time,” Phil Everly said from California. “That one stands out because of the sparseness and the fact that the songs were our heritage.”

The tribute by Armstrong and Jones — Foreverly, out this week — treats the songs respectfully, filling out the arrangements and usually keeping the Everly Brothers’ harmonies.

Although it adds an understated rhythm section, it lets the songs stay haunted.

Jones and Armstrong make an odd pair. But Jones’ most recent solo album, Little Broken Hearts, features a dulcet murder ballad of its own, Miriam; Armstrong has prized melody and narrative in Green Day songs.

If these two multimillion-selling, Grammy-winning singers were going to intersect, an album of Everly Brothers songs seems a plausible spot.

Songs Our Daddy Taught Us could hardly be more sparse or ghostly. Its arrangements use just the close-harmony voices of Don and Phil Everly, backed by a lightly strummed guitar and a bass fiddle.

Among the songs are folk standards such as Roving Gambler, about a man who seduces and abandons a woman and kills a man at a card game; I’m Here To Get My Baby Out of Jail, in which a mother bails out her son and then dies; and Down in the Willow Garden, about a wastrel who kills his girlfriend.

“Perfect for the holiday season,” joked Armstrong, 41.

Both took the music seriously.

“It’s almost like a meditation,” said Jones, 34. “Their voices are at times high and childlike in the most beautiful way, but these songs are so dark. There’s an innocence to their recordings, definitely. But that innocence, juxtaposed with the cheating lovers and everything — it’s just creepy when you hear it.”

The Everly Brothers, rooted in Kentucky, had been performing such songs since childhood, appearing daily on a live family radio show at 6 a.m. They were more concerned with melody and harmony than the meaning of words.

“I never thought about it too much as a kid when we first learned them,” said Phil Everly, 74 — two years younger than his brother.

“Those songs go back quite a bit. They’re real live songs about real things that were going on in people’s lives.”

Armstrong said he discovered the album a few years ago and got the idea of rerecording the songs with a woman. But he was hugely prolific with Green Day in 2012, releasing three albums within six months. Green Day toured internationally through much of 2013. But while blasting Green Day songs, as he has since the 1980s, Armstrong had also been considering the opposite end of the volume spectrum.

“Having big guitars and Marshalls (amplifiers) for so many years, it kind of leaves your ears ringing,” he said. “I love the power of playing quiet.”

“Me, too,” Jones said.

Playing quietly is what she does.

Armstrong’s wife, Adrienne, was the one who suggested Jones as a duet partner. He had met Jones at the 2005 Grammy Awards, where her duet with Ray Charles on his album Genius Loves Company beat Green Day’s American Idiot for record and album of the year.

“I’ve been asked to collaborate a lot,” Jones said, “but I’ve never been asked to do a whole record like this.”

Armstrong, who lives in Oakland, Calif., traveled to New York to make the album with Jones, who lives in Brooklyn. They didn’t tell their record companies. They booked five days in May — between Green Day tour dates — at the Magic Shop studio and returned for four days in August, for a total of nine days of recording with a rhythm section.

The priority was the vocal blend.

“I was just trying to find myself in her voice,” Armstrong said.

They sang together live, making eye contact, as the Everlys had done.

Foreverly is the type of side project that pop stars can do on a whim. It announces no new direction for either artist except in its spontaneity.

“I don’t think I’ll ever make a record and tell anybody again,” Armstrong said. “It’s just better that way.”

Phil Everly said he is pleased with the remake:

“They did a very good job, and they blend very well.”

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